Update K-Meleon To Use Mozilla's Latest GRE

Over recent months the Mozilla Foundation has been focusing on bringing out newer versions of its GRE(Gecko Runtime Environment) and thusly newer versions of their browser products which fix newly found security holes. As K-Meleon v0.9 is based on the older v1.7.5 GRE and does not get updated often, the following tutorial will explain two methods of updating K-Meleon v0.9 to a new GRE for those who seek better security.

The Quick & Easy Way

Brian Bruns has provided those users who are less experienced, less inclined to experiment, or who are time-limited, a downloadable package which contains only the bare essential files needed to update K-Meleon v0.9 to use the latest Gecko. Using his package apparently eliminates some visual glitches with K-Meleon which may arise from using the manual updating method, and also eliminates the need to delete the extra *.dat files from the components folder for History to work (the installer takes care of it all for you).

The Do It Yourself Way

This method assumes the user is familiar with the copying of files and folders and is willing to experiment a little to make things work.

1. Download the zip version of the latest stable Mozilla here, or alternatively download a zip version of the latest Mozilla nightly build.

2. Unzip the zip file, usually right-clicking on the file and selecting "Extract" should create a folder with the contents of the zip file.

3. With K-Meleon closed, copy the following files and folders from the Mozilla directory you have just created into your existing K-Meleon directory (usually c:\program files\k-meleon) and, when prompted have existing files overwritten:

all *.dll files in the main directory (where mozilla.exe resides). This is the quick and easy path for updating, a better alternative would be to just copy the same files that can be found in the K-Meleon directory. This can be accomplished with "xcopy", e.g. xcopy c:\mozilla\*.* %programfiles%\K-Meleon\ /U /Q /Y

Once you have copied the folders and files across, go to the k-meleon\components folder, and delete (or backup) compreg.dat and xpti.dat. You need to do this in order for the History function to work correctly. Otherwise if you don't use the History function leave the files as is.

4. It may also be a good idea to get rid of (i.e. delete) chrome.rdf in c:\program files\K-Meleon\Profiles\...\chrome\ so that K-Meleon will be able to pick up changes correctly. Sometimes it may also be necessary to delete overlayinfo.* in the same Profile folder.

5. Start K-Meleon. Help --> About K-Meleon should now report a newer Mozilla version (1.7.13).